


What’s wrong with him? He loves Aaron - (Five times Victoria saw it)

by dirtylittlegreasemonkey



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 05:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7832509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtylittlegreasemonkey/pseuds/dirtylittlegreasemonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She can tell just by the look on his face, the warm ripple in his green eyes, the way his body just seems loose of all the steel tensions that stiffen his frame."</p>
<p>Five times Victoria sees quite clearly how much her brother loves Aaron.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What’s wrong with him? He loves Aaron - (Five times Victoria saw it)

**Author's Note:**

> Set in canon before Aaron and Robert move into together, based on the dialogue between Vic and Adam when she quite clearly knows Robert loves Aaron. But how does she know? What has she seen between them?

**_What’s wrong with him? He loves Aaron._ **

 

**_i._ **

She has this thing about people checking their phones over tea. She doesn’t know where it’s come from. _It’s a nagging woman thing_ , Robert had said once – unhelpfully – when she’d scolded him for replying to a work email when they were all sat at the table.

“No,” he said as she stood there hands on hips and salad tongs poised. “I’m serious. Mum used to be the same when I tried to keep my GameBoy at the table.”

Adam had scoffed at the retro reference and the idea of this man of all limbs and arrogance being told off for playing tetris on a black and white screen, but Vic hadn’t let up and refused to sit down to eat until Robert had put his phone away. He backed down eventually, he always did. Even when _he_ cooked and she tried to enforce the same rules.

“It’s family time,” she’d said, despite ‘family’ being just the awkward trio of her, her husband and her brother – who by now should have moved on. Any time she tried to gather more of them together for a meal, excuses seemed to be second nature to everyone. “You can do work stuff anytime.”

“You know,” – Adam said, stabbing a tomato with his fork and then popping it into his mouth before she had a chance to take his plate away in punishment – “you do sort of sound like _my_ mum too.”

She isn’t _that_ uptight, despite the boys laughing at her. She has no problem with the TV on as they eat, but that’s mainly a preservation technique – let Adam and Robert talk for too long and there’s another argument in the house. Keeper’s is far too small to contain their tempers and she can’t deal with it any more. 

Tonight it’s just the two of them - her and Robert - and she let him cook (stir-fry, too many beansprouts for her liking but she won’t tell him to his face). Adam’s on a late scrap run to York and back so they forgo the usual squash around the table for tea and have it on their laps in front of the telly. Vic has control of the remote and swaps channels from the miserable soap opera to a documentary about baby zoo animals. There’s a baby gorilla being born, which they show minus the graphic gore and she’s busy cooing over its scrunched face when she looks over at her brother and sees his eyes aren’t even on the screen.

“Oi,” she says, flicking him with the end of the remote.

“What?” He barely shifts, but his neck is bent and craned as he reads a text on the cushion next to him.

“Phone,” she says and holds out an open palm. “Hand it over. I’ve told you before.”

“This isn’t school,” he says and then smiles as another text lights up the screen. His face changes as soon as the white light gleams on that screen. It’s obviously not work. His cheeks move into soft round circles and a little puff of air escapes his nose in a supressed laugh. She watches him leave his food and pick up the phone to reply. His thumbs blur as he replies and the speed of typing makes the plate on his knees shake. A second passes and then a reply shoots onto his screen in a different colour.

Of course it’s Aaron he’s texting. She doesn’t need to lean closer for a peek or take a sneaky glance when he goes to the kitchen for another beer. She can tell just by the look on his face, the warm ripple in his green eyes, the way his body just seems loose of all the steel tensions that stiffen his frame. She catches him sometimes just at the sink or late in the evening on the sofa and he’s just staring into space. He never did that. Not the sort of pearly eyed, slanted mouth sitting. No – if he was inactive his brain would be churning through something and you’d see him working through it in his jaw, the crunch crunch cycle of plotting and planning. But now it’s a different look he has, one she’s not seen on him before – not that she can remember anyway.

“No guesses who you’re texting then,” she says, her voice lilting at the end because she wants to sift out the exact reasons for the smile and the laugh and the little fluttering gaze he gives to the plate and then back to the phone. She never had Aaron down as a flirty texter or even an affectionate texter come to that.

“No one,” Robert says, inhumanly fast. “It’s just the bank.”

“Oh, the bank,” she says, smiling and turning her head away back to the gorillas. “And how is _the bank_ this evening? Missing you?”

She only hears Robert’s fork on the plate and a little huffing sigh of reluctance.

“Say hi from me,” she says, unwilling to give up just yet. “And you can invite him over, you know. I’ll make myself scarce.”

“I told you it’s the bank.”

“That’s what I meant!” she says, both of them trying to out-shrill each other with indignation. “If you needed to discuss investments or…”

To prove his point he flashes his phone in her face and a recent text from Natwest offering better rates on a business loan, but he doesn’t remove the phone fast enough because a second text reveals itself across the top of the screen.

_Aaron: I’ve sorted it. Thursday. You, me and some serious alone time. Promise. Then maybe…_

Vic’s thankful the dots hide the rest of the text because as curious as she is, she’s not _that_ curious. She keeps her face impassive and the text from Aaron slides away, but moments later she sees him bite back a grin and reply again.

“You’re really keen on that business loan, then,” she says, pressing her lips together and returning back to the TV.

**_ii._ **

 

It’s Friday morning and – even better – her day off. She wangled it with Marlon earlier in the week, promising him she’d do three late evenings in a row if he’d let her take a long weekend. It’s not like she has anything special planned, but she fancied a bit of ‘me’ time to just slob around on a weekday in her dressing gown – paint her toenails, watch a movie and eat cheese on toast, that sort of thing. She’s just getting her confidence back after the van break in but really she just wants a day where she doesn’t have to think about it. Everyone keeps asking how she is and how the self-defence classes are going, but she’d just like to be able to pretend for a day or two that it didn’t happen to her. Adam’s already at work by the time she wakes up and she decides she’s going to go to the effort of getting the blender out the cupboard to make a smoothie, only when she tries to locate it in the kitchen it’s not there and someone’s shifted it to what has affectionately been termed the ‘stuff-cupboard’ in the living room. The stuff-cupboard is where anything and everything they haven’t got room for goes and apparently that’s where her blender has been rehoused since Adam thought they needed one of those gimmicky all-in-one breakfast pans he’d seen advertised on Facebook and that has been stored in the kitchen instead.

She’s rummaging in the stuff-cupboard when she hears keys in the door and an out-of-tune whistle. Robert. She hasn’t seen him since Wednesday, but it’s becoming more unusual to see him days on end than it is not to. He doesn’t call out, assuming that she’s already left for work, and heads straight to the kitchen to make himself a coffee. He’s oblivious to the fact she’s already started arranging fruit on the kitchen counter. She can see him from where she stands, blender under one of her arms and the cord trailing, and he’s in his own world, whistling getting louder. His shirt (Wednesday’s shirt) is crumpled at the back and untucked, his hair flat and then fluffy in different places. She sees him go to the fridge for milk and stifle a yawn, scraping his fingers through the front of his hair leaving it upright in a tuft.

Vic closes the door of the stuff-cupboard softly and treads her way over to the kitchen hatch, barefoot and releases with a hidden laugh to herself that he’s whistling _Shake It Off_.

“Good night last night, was it?” she says, announcing her presence by clearing her throat.

A spoon jangles on the countertop and his eyebrows shoot up. He clutches his chest like she’s a bear jumping out at him in the woods. “Jesus, Vic! You scared the life out of me! I thought you were at work.”

“Day off,” she says, gesturing to her thick dressing gown and pushing through to the kitchen with her blender. “I’m making a smoothie. Want one? It’s better for you than coffee.”

“Yes, but this, might actually help me get through the paperwork I need to do,” he says, nodding at the cafetiere.

“So it _was_ a good night,” she says, scooting past him to plug in the blender.

He dodges her gaze with a sheepish look to the ground and folds his arms, a smile creeping in. “Yeah,” he says with a small sigh. “It was nice. Aaron managed to ship Liv off to Gabby’s so I got him all to myself for a change.” She always finds it hard to picture the two of them together exactly, it’s always seemed so unlikely, but then sometimes she’ll remember a time she saw Robert put his hand on Aaron’s arm and Aaron look up at him like he was made of stars. Then she can picture it, the quiet softness of two messy people who found calm together between the chaos.

“Well you look knackered,” she says, peeling a banana with the bin lid open. And it’s true he does, purple circles under his eyes, bloodshot at the corners. But beyond that there’s something else about him, not a tiredness but something lighter, something that makes him smile more, makes him prop himself against the kitchen cupboards like he has all the energy in the world when he claims to have none.

“Thanks very much!”

“No, I’m just glad you had a good time. And you know, it’s been nice for me and Adam too.”

“What are you trying to say? You want rid of me?”

She tuts, loading fruit into the blender and elbowing out the way when the kitchen becomes too cramped for them both to be circling the same patch of lino.

“No, it’s just nice to have what you and Aaron have – a bit of _alone_ time.”

“Please,” he says. “I don’t need to hear about the two of you, it’s bad enough having to listen to it all first-hand.”

She gives him a pointed look, holding a punnet of strawberries like she’s going to hit him with it. “Come off it,” she says. “You’re hardly ever here these days. Now that you’re all loved up with…lover-boy.”

“Wow,” Robert says, dryly. “Inventive.”

“How _does_ he put up with you?”

Robert smiles, this time wide and untamed. It makes him look boyish – not the uptight or serious businessman he likes to project. “How long have you got?”

She rolls her eyes, turning her back on him to finish making her smoothie. She wants to tell him too that she likes seeing him like this, happy. Free. But she knows, even if he’s getting better at being honest, that he clams up when she tries to push him into talking, so she keeps quiet, letting him stay in the room to drink his coffee while she finishes making her breakfast, humming a few bars of _Shake It Off_ before she realises what she’s doing.

**iii.**

 

Lunchtime one Tuesday he’s sulking over a pint at the bar, his finger smearing the wet ring of condensation. Robert would claim to everyone that he doesn’t do sulking, that he’s _a man_ about these things, resistant to any sort of set back or disappointment. And for some things he does exactly that, when he can afford to be unemotional and strategic. If it’s business, or if he can treat something like a business – a mission or a series of challenging tasks – then he will. He’ll solider on, formulate a new plan until one sticks and he can move onto another stage and get exactly what he wants, minus any sort of emotional strain. He’ll be composed, unreadable – little more than a sigh and an eye roll.

But there’s one very obvious area of his life he can’t do this with, one which always leads to pouting or pacing and plans crumbling under his fingertips. She sees it in the way his lips close up, the glaze of his eyes and the lines on his forehead which get deeper under this loss he’s unable to control. Usually when she hears about what’s go on she has little sympathy for her idiot brother but she’d be a liar if she said her heart didn’t pang a little to see him hunched over looking so glum.

He should be out in the backroom having dinner with his boyfriend, she thinks. That’s what he’d planned to do – in fact she was sure he’d told her she’d be unlikely to see him much of the week. He said it with that smug air of someone too busy and content to worry about anyone else but he gave her the courtesy of telling her anyway.

Instead he’s sitting alone, ordering off the lunch menu in such a disinterested way she thinks he might as well not bother ordering at all. The order was delivered via Marlon who looked as if Robert had given him some sort of impossible test to pass.

“Yes?” she said looking up from the mashed potato she was piping over the cottage pie.

“Your Robert’s at the bar – right face on him. He says he wants to order whatever you feel like making him. I said we normally ask customers to be a _little_ more specific when they order but like I said, he had a face on.”

“What kind of face?”

“I think we call it ‘The Robert Sugden Death Glare’ or something slightly more…self-pitying.”

Marlon choose his words carefully like she’d run and report back to her brother but she only groaned, giving him a weary look. “What’s he done now?”

“I think we can narrow it down,” Marlon said, leaning in to pin Robert’s order on the board.

Cottage pie in the oven and instructions to Marlon given to make Robert a bacon burger, Victoria headed to the bar area to see her Robert in full sulk mode.

Of course she loves him, idiotic behaviour and all. She stands in front of him, mimicking his pout and waiting for him to meet her gaze.  

“Did Marlon tell you what I asked for?” he says, pathetically. His voice is quiet and slow and he taps the beer mat on the surface of the bar with a lazy rhythm. She can see from the outfit he’s wearing he’s obviously made an effort – favourite shirt underneath his leather jacket – but clearly that didn’t do the trick to sway Aaron after whatever he’d done.

“A smack round the face?” she says.

“What?”

Hands on her hips, that familiar pose. “What have you done to upset him?”

“Who?”

“Aaron! Who do you think?”

Robert folds his arms across his chest and leans back on the stool, trying to straighten his spine and crawl back into defensive mode. “Nothing.”

“Even Marlon knows your sulking. _Marlon_. So spit it out or I’ll get it out of Aaron instead.”

Victoria watches him rub his hands across his legs and look away from her, his downturned mouth drawing distress lines on the rest of his face. She can never keep track of the two of them, always bickering and falling back into bed before she’s heard about why they fell out in the first place. When she falls out with Adam it’s usually something niggling and domestic – about towels or gummy toothpaste tubes – but when Robert and Aaron fall out it’s days or silence and tempers and glares. It’s Robert snapping at Adam over the smallest thing, a stream of coffee cups and swearing more than usual. And then when they make up she gets her brother back – cooking dinner and emptying the dishwasher and buying her a muffin from the shop.

“We were meant to be going away for the night,” Robert says, his voice creeping to a lower volume because at his sulkiest he’s at his most insecure too. “Work’s been busy and Liv’s been…Liv so we sorted this hotel. A really top class one. Gym, pool, golf course. The works. I even got us a suite.”

Vic tilts her head to the side. “Don’t tell me you took Chrissie there?”

“I’m not that much of an idiot.”

She widens her gaze at him. He thinks she doesn’t know about the fancy-pants hotel he took Aaron too only to chuck him out when Chrissie showed up. He thinks she’s clueless to all the stunts he pulled to keep them both sweet.

“So what’s the problem then?” she says.

“I’m meant to be checking out new vans for the haulage firm. The only day they could manage was the same day as our night away. And this bloke’s north of Newcastle. I can’t make it back in time to do both.” Robert sighs, leaning his weight on the bar again. “It’s not like I wanted to cancel it. I was looking forward it, but he’s not happy.”

Vic pats his arm and looks at his nearly empty glass, going to pour him another without even asking. “Can you rebook the hotel?”

“I tried,” he says. “But Aaron said not to bother.”

“He’s just disappointed.”

“Well so I am!” Robert says. “He says he doesn’t care, but he obviously does otherwise he wouldn’t be ignoring my texts.”

“Maybe he’s just busy.”

“Busy slagging me off to Adam probably.”

“Look,” she says, placing a new pint in front of him. “Book a whole weekend away and don’t take no for an answer. Cancel your meetings if you need to. Better yet, get Jimmy to go.”

“Jimmy?” he scoffs, looking over to where Jimmy is sat, obliviously moaning away to Dan in the corner of the pub.

“Just don’t be so mopey about it,” she says. “It doesn’t suit you.” She turns to leave, but not before nodding at the pint. “That’s on me by the way. Just wipe that miserable look off your face and go and make it up with him or I’ll throw that over you.”

 

**_iv._ **

 

Adam’s feeling in a generous mood (and he also has the man-flu so anything too cosy is out of the question) so when they decide to rent a movie, he suggests they ask Robert if he wants to join them. It’s only some by-the-numbers thriller but Robert’s always had the same awful taste in movies as her husband so she figures its worth asking. Even with Adam’s cold they’ve made it a proper movie night - drawn the curtains and turned out the lights and found a multipack of crisps to open.

Vic climbs the stairs but as she nears the top she sees Robert’s bedroom door ajar and hears his voice filtering through. He’s on the phone and the softness of his tone tells her everything she needs to know. Of course she can only hear one side of the conversation and she isn’t really meant to be listening at all but she can’t help herself.

“Nearly done with it. Insurance forms still to do. You don’t fancy…No? You know you love a good form.” He laughs, warm, long tendrils of it. Victoria stands just outside the door and leans her head against the wall. These old bricks don’t mask anything.

“No, not much else. I was gonna come for a drink but as you’re otherwise engaged…No I’m not having a go, you know that. I think you’re doing a great job with her. It’s never easy…No but you’re getting there. It takes time. She’s a good kid really…No, you’ve got every right telling her that. She’ll thank you for it eventually…Of course I’m sure. When do I ever lie to you?...Alright, fair point…Yeah that too but you don’t complain _that_ often.”

She hears a low chuckle and she winces, hoping not to hear anything else along those lines and wondering if she should have knocked five minutes ago.

“Aaron you know I think you’re amazing for taking her on. After everything you’ve been through, I just think you’re…No, I mean it. I’m not just saying it…You’re this incredible guy and she’s lucky, I’m lucky…Yeah well, I’m always right. And I love you.”

She must have moved, caused a creak in the floorboards or something, because he moves across the gap in the door and the light spilling out of the room brightens as he opens it, still on the phone.

“Hold on a sec,” he says to Aaron. “Speaking of annoying sisters, mine is lurking.”

“I wasn’t listening!” she says, hands raised and backing away. They’re like teenagers – she missed out on this first time, being the annoying kid sister and pestering him over his love life and his secrets.

Robert widens his eyes and crosses his arms as if to say: _I’m waiting_.

“Just wanted to know if you wanted to watch a film with us, but if you’re busy…”

He presses the loudspeak button on the phone and his eyes sparkle with amusement. “Vic wants to know if I want to squash on the sofa with the pair or them or if you’re going to keep me entertained.”

“Hi Aaron,” she says into the phone. “You’re welcome to join us.”

“No can do,” he says. “I’m holding Liv captive. She got caught smoking at school.”

“Oh dear,” Vic says.

“So it’s a no to the phone sex too,” Robert says, grinning as both his sister and boyfriend grimace and groan respectively.

“And on that note,” - Aaron says – “See ya.”

Robert turns back to Victoria, pocketing his phone. “So now that you’re done eavesdropping, was there anything else?”

“I’m not checking up on you,” she says.

“Good. Because there’s nothing to check up on.”

“I’m just…”

“Nosey?”

“Happy. For you.”

“Great,” he says. “Are we done?”

“Can’t tempt you with Gerrard Butler?” she says. “Or is he not quite gruff enough.”

“Enjoy the movie, Vic,” he says, before returning to his room and this time, closing the door until it clicks shut.

She stays on the stairs just long enough to hear that smooth, soft tone return and hears: _She’s gone. I wasn’t joking you know…_

 

**_v._ **

 

There’s knowing about it. There’s hearing about it. There’s being aware of it. And then there’s seeing it. It’s a whole different thing. It does still give her that slight burst of surprise – and look-away weirdness. But then she supposes it would with anyone, especially when it’s your own brother and especially when it’s your own brother with a lad that was once your boyfriend. Of course it’s weird.

She gets off work early because they’ve got a situation in the pub kitchen – a powercut – and Marlon said it doesn’t take two to make a few sandwiches now that the hot menu is off, so he lets her leave and she heads to the scrapyard in search of Adam. She fancies the afternoon out somewhere, a nice walk along the riverside or a shopping trip, just something now that she’s got the rest of the day off and the sun is finally out.

When she gets to the scrapyard, the sun beating down on her face and making the gravel a blinding white, she doesn’t see any sign of Adam in his hi-vis, but she sees Robert and Aaron leaning up against a clapped out van just looking at each other and talking. She’s not close enough to hear them yet and she isn’t in their line of sight thanks to the collection of scrap and junk lining the main entrance.

She sees her brother smile, one of those half-lidded, unfurling smiles which he follows by moving in closer to Aaron and pulling him in with his hands on his waist. Aaron steadies the movement and places his palms on Robert’s chest, still at first and then his hands circle a little. Vic can’t remember ever seeing Aaron so openly affectionate in broad daylight with a man before. It doesn’t even feel like that long ago he was so buried under his own self-loathing and there’s a part of her that feels proud to know her brother makes him feel so at ease. He wasn’t around to see the worst of it, to know Aaron as this furious lad of darkness and hatred who’d rather die than be himself. But now it’s as if that Aaron is finally a thing of the past. This is Aaron as he was meant to be.  

She stands a little closer and the breeze changes direction so she can hear them speaking now. Aaron runs his hands along the length of Robert’s pink tie and his gaze sort of hovers around Robert’s mouth. Cautious, daring snatches of appreciative glances.

“You can be late, can’t you?” Aaron says, flicking the end of Robert’s tie with the pad of his thumb.

“Can I?” Robert has his head lowered, his hands on Aaron’s hips. “How late are we talking?”

Aaron wets his bottom lip and runs his hand along Robert’s arm until he reaches his shoulder. “Up to you.”

Robert’s smile slides into something serious and concentrated as he pulls Aaron towards him, their mouths meeting in a fast-pulsed suggestion of how they were planning to make Robert late for this meeting. Through the kiss, Victoria sees Aaron’s fingers work at loosening Robert’s tie and then, feeling like she can’t be a voyeur any longer, she rushes closer, making her feet stamp hard on the stones and clearing her throat. She looks at her shoes to avoid seeing her brother grasp hungrily at his boyfriend and the push and pull unravelling of hands against clothes, breaths panting against skin.

She clears her throat a little louder again and waits as they spring apart, flushed and unable to look her in the eye.

“When you’ve finished sucking each other’s face off, maybe you could tell me where my husband is. He’s not answering his phone.”

Aaron rocks on his feet and gives a sideways glance to Robert who is repositioning his tie. Aaron’s gone red right up to the ears and Vic finds it rather sweet.

“Skipton,” Aaron says. “He’ll be back in about an hour.” She sees him look sheepishly at Robert, like that hour was gleamingly precious and then his gaze is off into the distance, away from both of them. He picks up his hi-vis which has ended up on the ground and mumbles something before heading towards the rusted carcass of an old Nissan.

“Aren’t you meant to be working?” she says to Robert, a little smirk pinched between her lips.

“I am,” he says, hands on hips and eyes firmly placed on Aaron’s backside as he strides away. “I’m just checking up on my investment.”

“So I see,” she says, turning back and following the direction of his stare. “And how is it, the _investment_.”

He smiles, little glints of silver in his eyes as he straightens up his tie. His chest expands as he breathes in, smugly and then there’s a little flutter of self-consciousness when his smile curves into something more serious and thoughtful. He looks at the folder he’s picked up from the ground and carries in one arm. She knows at the front of it he keeps the contract he has for the scrapyard business. His name signed just above Aaron’s. She knows he smiles every time he opens that folder and sees it. It doesn’t even belong in that folder, it’s not even the right place for it. It’s old now, he doesn’t even need to carry it around with him. But he does.

“Best decision I made,” Robert says, holding the folder to his chest. He has a smudge of engine grease on the collar of his shirt but she doesn’t tell him, just watches him leave, passing by Aaron, telling him _Later_ and touching the centre curve of his spine.

There’s knowing about it. There’s hearing about it. There’s being aware of it. And then there’s seeing it. Robert loves Aaron.

 

**Author's Note:**

> for Sophie, my constant go-to girl for fic ideas and inspiration :)


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